December 10 2008

A project I have started to get involved with since moving back into product management...

As I explained back in May, the Smart Cube appliance is not just a box with an operating system, but a box that has a consistent way of installing and maintaining software on the box and accessing remote services, be they technical support or remote processing of some kind. The idea behind this framework, which is built from a common set of APIs and a common toolkit and which is called the Smart Business Application Integrator, is to standardize how software and services link together, regardless of operating system. ...

Anyway, the idea behind the framework is to have operating systems, systems management, database, middleware, and application software all plug together in such a way that remote management, patching, and updating of the entire stack is consistent and automated. IBM and its partners also want to make the delivery of services, such as disaster recovery or data replication, absolutely transparent to the end user and to make monitoring of the underlying hardware and its software easy, too.

As described back in May, the Blue Business platform also includes an online marketplace with Amazon-style user ratings called the Global Application Marketplace, which we now know as the Smart Market. And this, according to Mike Prochaska, who is program director of the Blue Business Platform at IBM, is where the focus of the whole project really is.

Some of the work in progress from our team now is how to best package up Notes and Domino, and to provide an opportunity for Notes ISVs and partners, through the Smart Cube and Smart Marketplace. As this article indicates, the project is in pilot in India today and will start a very gradual rollout in the US through 2009.